House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., is confident the closed-door Democratic Caucus leadership elections Wednesday will prove she has strong support for her speaker bid. (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call)

House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi and the small contingent of members who oppose her are both heading into Wednesday’s leadership elections knowing she’ll emerge as the caucus’s nominee for speaker.

But the two sides still have different expectations for what will happen in a Jan. 3 floor vote five weeks from now, as Pelosi remains confident she’ll have the support of the majority of the House to secure the gavel and her opponents are still predicting she won’t.

California Reps. Linda Sánchez and Barbara Lee had announced months ago they were running for caucus chair. The two had squared off against one another for vice chair in 2016, a race that Sánchez won by just two votes.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., holds a press conference in the Capitol on Wednesday, the day after Election Day. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call)

Basking in the House Democrats’ midterm election wins, Nancy Pelosi wanted to focus on the planks of the Democratic campaign platform that will become the new majority’s agenda: health care, infrastructure and cleaning up corruption in Washington.

But the California Democrat cannot escape questions about another theme that emerged on the campaign trail — opposition to her leadership.

Now that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and her party are back in power, they have several legislative priorities they wish to pursue. (Margaret Spencer/ CQ Roll Call)

Democrats have been abundantly clear about the top items that would be on their agenda if voters were to put them in the House majority, ranging from a campaign finance overhaul to legislation designed to reduce health care costs.

Now that the midterm results have confirmed Democrats have won the House, here’s what you can expect with them in control next Congress.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi takes the podium before speaking during an election watch party at the Hyatt Regency in Washington, D.C. Pelosi is seeking another bid for the speakership. (Zach Gibson/Getty Images)

Updated on Dec. 6 at 6:21 p.m. | Now that she’s helped Democrats win the House majority, Nancy Pelosi’s bid to reclaim the speaker’s gavel is officially underway.

Several Democratic candidates expressed opposition to Pelosi or echoed general calls for new leadership during their campaigns, but only a handful had made specific pledges to oppose her during a floor vote for speaker. That number has grown since the election, but so too has the number of members-elect supporting Pelosi.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., suggested Monday that the outcome of the 2020 presidential election will factor into her decision on how long to stay in Congress. (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call file photo)

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who hopes to be speaker next year if Democrats win a chamber majority, suggested Monday that the outcome of the 2020 presidential election would factor into her decision on how long to stay in Congress.

The 78-year-old California Democrat has long signaled that she sees her congressional career coming to an end in the not-so-distant future.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., says she will not trade with President Donald Trump for his border wall, calling it a "manhood issue" for him. (Photo By Sarah Silbiger/CQ Roll Call file photo)

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Tuesday there is nothing she would trade for President Donald Trump’s border wall, setting a hard negotiating stance in advance of an expected December showdown over the issue.

“It happens to be like a manhood issue for the president, building a wall, and I’m not interested in that,” the California Democrat said during a discussion at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has been painted as a villain in Republican campaign ads attacking Democratic candidates, but a spate of recent polling shows GOP efforts to tie candidates to her is not likely to be effective come November. (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call file photo)

With their House majority hanging in the balance, Republicans have tried time and time again to tie Democratic candidates to Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, hoping that her general unpopularity will drag the candidates down too. It doesn’t seem to be working.

A spate of recent polls have found that voters don’t care much about candidates’ views on the California Democrat. More voters care about what they think of President Donald Trump, these polls have found, supporting historical patterns in which midterm elections often become a referendum on the occupant of the White House.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, center right, seen here at the Democratic National Convention in July with House Democratic female members and candidates, is confident her party will make gains in the lower chamber this November. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call file photo)

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday predicted that whichever party wins the House majority in November, it will do so by a single digit.

"Either we’ll be a single digit ahead or they’ll be a single digit ahead," the California Democrat said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." "But we’ll make tremendous inroads in terms of the number of Democrats in the House."